As we near the one-year anniversary of the Chilean mine rescue, it's a good time to reflect on the lessons that event can teach Americans. Many of us are looking for a rescue of our own, from crisis after crisis. It's time for us to learn some lessons about leadership in the face of tremendous adversity - and from an apparently unlikely source.

What if our most important endeavors, those that determine the direction of our country, dictate the quality of our relationships and define us as human beings, could be structured in such a way that everybody wins?

My South American trip is in full swing and, again and again, I've been struck by the way that Chile and Brazil, the two countries I'm visiting, have, on key issues, transcended the tired division between left and right the United States seems hopelessly mired in. Chile is led by a president from the right, Brazil by a president from the left. But both have gone beyond stereotypes and shibboleths in order to tackle hard problems. My first stop was Santiago, Chile, where I interviewed President Sebastián Piñera. Piñera is the third richest man in Chile; a former professor with a Ph.D. from Harvard; and the first right-wing president Chileans have elected in the two decades since Pinochet. So it's surprising to learn that his signature goal is the elimination of poverty. "By the end of the decade," he tells me, "we want to have closed the gap in income between rich and poor."

For our inaugural Good Men of the Year list, we're not celebrating memorable personalities or newly-minted pop culture icons. This was a year of unprecedented challenges, and it cried out for good men.

(SANTIAGO, CHILE) A surprising number of the conservatives I've met here -- starting with President Piñera -- talk about the goal of eliminating poverty in their country by the end of the decade. The number of U.S. politicians -- including liberal ones -- eager to have that conversation has been dwindling, even as the number of Americans living below the poverty line has been growing (it's now 1 in 7). Piñera exudes a sense of urgency, as though there is not a moment to waste. His line of attack mirrors the approach he took with the trapped Chilean miners. His experts offered him three different strategies to try to get them out. Do all three at the same time, he ordered. "That," he told me, "is what I would do if it were my children in the mine." How different things might be here if our leaders took the same approach to the millions of Americans trapped by the economic crisis.